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Paul, a personal friend of the chief, appeared, and later on the Assistant Secretary of the Interior, accompanied by Mr. Nicolay, private secretary of President Lincoln. Apparently that great humanitarian President saw the whole injustice of the proceeding against a loyal nation, and the difficulty was at an end.
I visited at their houses and heard them tell what Lincoln had said when he sat at table where I then sat. I listened long to Lincoln stories, and "and that reminds me" was often on the lips of those I loved. All the tales told by the faithful Herndon and the needlessly loyal Nicolay and Hay were current coin, and the rehearsal of the Lincoln-Douglas debate was commonplace.
He turned to the Bible which, say Nicolay and Hay, "commonly lay on his desk," and read the verse: "And every one that was in distress, and every one that was in debt, and every one that was discontented, gathered themselves unto him; and he became a captain over them: and there were with him about four hundred men." The Fremonters struck no responsive chord among the people.
Young John Hay, whom Nicolay, his private secretary, introduced as his assistant, a humorist like Lincoln himself, but with leanings to literary elegance and a keen eye for social distinctions, loved him all along and came to worship him, but irreverent amusement is to be traced in his recently published letters, and the glimpses which he gives us of "the Ancient" or "the Tycoon" when quite at home and quite at his ease fully justify him.
"Twenty may do, Maitre Nicolay; but if we are not off by that time, we shall not be able to go at all." "You are pursued?" "Yes. In half an hour at latest a troop of soldiers will be here after us." Maitre Nicolay looked at the sky. "There is wind enough when we once get well beyond the town; but unless we get a good start they will overtake us in boats. Is it a state affair, Maitre Perrot?
One copy of this printed draft of the inaugural message was given to Mr. Seward, and another to the venerable Franics P. Blair, with the request that they would read and criticise. A few unimportant changes were made, and Mr. Nicolay, who was to be the President's private secretary, made the corrected copy in a fair hand, which Mr. Lincoln was to read. Mr.
Lincoln's little joke, for the next morning I learned that his Republican neighbors had offered to furnish wines and liquor, but he would not allow them in the house; that his Democratic friends also sent round baskets of champagne, which he would not accept. "I met him the next morning in his law office, also his secretary, J. G. Nicolay.
It must have been gratifying to him that in his own precinct, where he was so well known, he received the almost unanimous vote of all parties. Biographers differ as to the precise number of votes in the New Salem precinct, but by Nicolay and Hay it is given as 277 for, and three against. His next political experience was a candidacy for the legislature 1834.
John G. Nicolay says, "his political chart and inspiration."
The Southerners also had the same notion, hoping by one great victory to discourage and convince the North and make peace on the basis of independence; e.g., see Johnston's Narrative 113, 115. Grant likewise had the notion of a decisive battle. Memoirs, i. 368. The position taken by Messrs. Nicolay and Hay, I think, fully warrants this language.
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